Expulsions, Abortions, and Indictments

 

What a week! The news stories tumbled into each other with a frenzied flow and ended with a Friday Night news dump that had the force of a thrown bomb. Let’s take a few moments to recap, as the newscasters say. The week started with the indictment-unprecedented-of a former president and also current candidate for president.

On Tuesday, the New York (Manhattan-based) District Attorney, Alvin Bragg, opened the indictment as specified by the recent Grand Jury. Instead of the widely expected misdemeanor charges, they charged all 34 counts as felonies, which carry heavier penalties. Details were not readily forthcoming but involved a combination of business and tax filings that were allegedly falsified to cover up relationships with porn stars and others and payments of hush money. Although the situation has been known for some time, the Department of Justice did not allow previous prosecutors to investigate the former president during his term in office. During the brief arraignment, the judge admonished the defense and the defendant against making inflammatory statements or encouraging others to take illegal actions. DJT already used his social media site to disparage the DA, his wife, the judge, and his daughter. Some thought that the judge refrained from imposing a gag order to prevent the defendant from using that to continue to raise money. One of his attorneys noted he raised ten million dollars from his appeals just by appearing in court. While I don’t know if this statement is true, he is probably the only defendant who could earn money this way! And, just as pointed out by the January 6^th committee, there is no guarantee that the money will go to pay attorneys and no structure to prevent the funds from going to him directly. Even so, he will tap into his MAGA faithful; those people who have far less money than he does, mostly.

He will soon also appear in another NY court in a civil defamation and rape case filed by writer E. Jean Carroll. I wonder if he will use that to raise money also? That man has no shame. Anyway, she claimed he raped her in a department store dressing room after a chance meeting in the women’s department over twenty years ago. She told friends about the incident but was afraid to go forward. When she mentioned it after he became president, he called her statements untrue and defamed her. The law allows presidential statements to be made without penalty, but he repeated the defamation after he left office, which permitted the court to allow the suit to move forward. The jury is being selected for this trial; this judge is allowing their names to be protected, to allow them to be free from harassment and worse by the MAGA crowd. He instituted this protection after DJT made remarks against the prosecutors and others in the felony case.

And, of course, we are all still awaiting the decision by the Fulton County Grand Jury in Georgia. Will they return felony charges of election tampering or racketeering against him and others for attempts he made to change the results of the 2020 election in that state?

Special prosecutor Jack Smith has demanded testimony from many former White House aides and has won court cases when they rejected his subpoenas. Even former VP Mike Pence, after he lost his argument that as a member of the Senate, even temporarily, this protected him from testifying, stated he will not appeal. The Washington Post recently reported that Mar-a-Lago staff testified to the DC Grand Jury that DJT directed the movement of the classified documents from the storage area to the residence. According to some legal authorities, this could lead to an additional charge of obstruction of justice. Stay tuned, folks! This could be the first time we have a presidential candidate under multiple indictments.

Moving on to expulsions!

In March, a former student killed six people in Nashville, Tennessee at a private Christian school shooting; three were nine-year-old students. For days, students in the state left their classrooms and demonstrated; some marched to the state capitol where the legislature was in session demanding common sense gun regulations with the banning of assault-type weapons. Three Democratic legislators who supported their efforts joined them. The Republican Party controls the Tennessee House by a super majority that refused to consider any gun measures. Leadership eventually demanded a vote to expel the three Democrats who, when they would not be recognized to speak, went to the front of the chamber, and spoke anyway; two used a bullhorn. The two young men, each only 27 years old, who spoke this way were Black; a white woman delegate-a former school teacher-joined them. A vote of the House expelled the Black delegates; they did not expel the white woman by a margin of one vote. (She claimed she was not expelled because she was white.) The speeches by the two men were eloquent. The defensive remarks by the Republicans stopped just short of calling them “boy”, but it was certainly implied. The delegates were charged with destroying the decorum of the body and not minding their manners, basically because they came to the front of the room without permission (which would not be given anyway.) Each represented major urban areas (mostly black cities) in the state; their expulsion means that those cities will have no voice in future legislation affecting them. The state is so gerrymandered that Black representation is minimal by design. The affected city governments have both said that they will just reappoint their same representatives, who can sit on an interim basis until the next election. It is unknown whether the body will seat them. Somehow lost in all of this brouhaha is the reason the students were marching in the first place; they are tired of school shootings and want their government to do something about this issue. With this legislature, it is doubtful that any legislation changing gun regulations might pass.

Meanwhile, further south in Florida, behind closed doors with NRA representatives attending, Governor DeSantis signed legislation allowing “permit-less concealed weapons carry”. Just what we need in this country! There have been 131 mass shootings since the beginning of the year in the US. (The referenced article, a week old, is already out of date.) The definition of a mass shooting is when there are four or more victims shot or killed in an incident; so those with only two wounded or killed are not counted here. Last year, at this time, the total was 113.

As expected, the very conservative judge in Amarillo, Texas, chosen by the anti-abortion movement, ruled against the use of the drug Mifepristone as approved by the Federal Drug Administration (FDA). The group claimed that the FDA had not proven that the drug was safe, even though it has been in use in Europe even longer than in the US. He used convoluted reasoning about interstate sales of immoral or illicit products described in the nineteenth century. “The Comstock Act plainly forecloses mail-order abortion in the present,” wrote Kacsmaryk. He added, “Defendants cannot immunize the illegality of their actions by pointing to a small window in the past where those actions might have been legal.” Michelle Goldberg wrote about the abortion ruling as quoted above and the use of this 150-year-old law called The Comstock Law in the New York Times.

She states: “There is something head-spinning about how quickly Comstock’s spirit of punitive repression has settled on a country where, not long ago, social liberalism seemed largely triumphant, with the rapid acceptance of gay marriage, the growing visibility of trans people and over-the-counter access to emergency contraception.”

Shortly after this ruling, a judge in the state of Washington responded to a suit by several Democratic Attorney Generals which asked for the support of the FDA permission for Mifepristone and reinforced their positions. Judge Kacsmaryk placed his ruling on a week’s hold to allow a response by the Government. The Justice Department has already responded in opposition to his ruling. The issue will probably soon go to the Supreme Court.

This issue is more than abortions. It may challenge the authority for contraceptives and other medications also approved by the FDA. It may also challenge the authority of the various departments of the government to enforce any statutes. The Supreme Court altered the recent Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) ability to enforce clean water decisions with rule-making rolling back long-held regulations at the state level. This was just a start in this direction. The Court decided this on the Emergency Docket, which meant that the decision was not written and only the numbers (5-4) were given, with only the dissenters’ writing opinions. Some legal experts are concerned by the Court deciding to take fewer cases each year and usurping the regular pathways to the court by allowing so many decisions to be decided on the Emergency Docket without public discussion of the case or an explanation of decisions, especially when many of these issues are not urgent.

There is one hopeful note: in the election in Wisconsin for judges on the State Supreme Court a moderate judge was elected and will change the balance on the Court there, from Conservative to Liberal. Residents expected that this court can now overturn the Wisconsin abortion ban from the Nineteenth Century and revisit the gerrymandering that was so lopsided in Wisconsin under Republican control. The Justice won by ten points over her opponent, an avowed anti-abortion candidate.

Before I leave tonight, I must mention that an investigative report by ProPublica on Justice Thomas noted that for over twenty years, he has accepted gifts, trips on private jets, luxury yachts to tropical islands, and stays at private resorts from a Texas billionaire (Harlan Crow) he described as a friend. This friend sits on the boards of many conservative entities that sign on to Supreme Court cases. Donor Crow stated he did not directly have cases before the Court. However, he also provided the funding for the organization where Thomas’ wife worked and which paid her a six-figure salary. Thomas released a statement saying that he was told that trips with friends do not have to be reported. I am certain we will hear more about this matter.

“Til next week-Peace!